The D.C. Council on Tuesday could pass new gun laws that would require police to seize guns from people deemed a danger to themselves or others and restrict gun owners from modifying their weapons.

The first provision – known as a “red flag law” – would allow family or friends, in some cases, to call police to have guns confiscated without having the owner arrested, provided the guns not linked to a crime, because of a threat they pose to themselves or others.

If an individual hands over an illegal gun, they would be immune from any punishment related to possessing an illegal gun.

The Private Security Regulatory Authority (PSRA) is set to take private security guards through a guns training so they can complement police officers in offering security.

Director-General Fazul Mahamed said on Tuesday that an internationally approved curriculum was being developed for the training that the authority will roll out next year.

The training will be carried out in collaboration with technical and vocational education and training institutions and the National Industrial Training Authority (NITA).

“We have formally made the request and brought in experts who will go through the curriculum. By the end of next year, you will all have gone through the training,” Mr Mahamed told the guards during a meeting in Nairobi.

After the training, he said, the guards will be vetted and then taken through security assessment before being given licences and internationally accredited certification to offer security services, processes which will enable them to own the firearms.

SPECIFIC TASKS

The director-general explained that the training will be for specific assignments, including offering protection for very important persons and security for cash in transit.

There will be a yearly and mandatory refresher course as the guards will be tasked with escorting cash and other valuables for various institutions and individuals.

“We are acquiring international accreditation for such trainings so that by the time the authority issues you with licences, you will be able to seek jobs even in Dubai, London and Qatar,” he told the guards.

“We are not going to arm everybody … only those who will be given such assignments.”

Mr Mahamed said the guards will not be allowed to take the weapons home – they will leave them with

Every once in a while, an idea takes root that is so off-base, so nonsensical, that it almost defies analysis. Because to analyze something implies that it is worthy of our time, energy and thought processes. And the idea I’m about to hoist, and hopefully deflate, is one of the silliest I’ve encountered in a long time.

I refer to the notion that the Federal Reserve needs to raise interest rates more aggressively now so that it will have room — more ammunition in its holster, if you will — when the economy suffers its next downturn and requires monetary stimulus.

If the Fed could stockpile ammo for a later date — lay in a stash of bullets and gunpowder — the notion might make sense: the equivalent of saving for a rainy day. But the advocates of such a theory, including Harvard University economics professor Martin Feldstein and former Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher, fail to differentiate between actual ammunition that can be stockpiled and accessed at a later date; and interest-rate ammo, which must be applied today in order to acquire the necessary fire power for the future. Changes in interest rates have real-time effects. Acquiring the necessary ammo to defend against the next recession is tantamount to staging an offensive attack today.

“Though it would have been better for the Fed to start raising rates earlier, the Fed is right to increase the short-term rate now so that it will have as much ammunition as possible when the next downturn comes,” Feldstein wrote in a Nov. 26 Wall Street Journal op-ed.

How much ammunition is needed? A 10% federal funds rate would provide lots of ammo, but